The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater Read Free Book Online Page B

wanted to say in front of Ashley, and Ronan enjoyed the effect that awkward silence had on his brother. The two elder Lynch brothers — there were three total at Aglionby — had been at odds for as long as Adam had known them. Unlike most of the world, Gansey preferred Ronan to his elder brother Declan, and so the lines had been drawn. Adam suspected Gansey’s preference was because Ronan was earnest even if he was horrible, and with Gansey, honesty was golden.
    Declan waited a second too long to speak, and Ronan crossed his arms over his chest. “You’ve got quite the guy here, Ashley. You’ll have a great night with him and then some other girl can have a great night with him tomorrow.”
    A fly buzzed against a windowpane far above their heads. Behind Ronan, his door, covered with photocopies of his speeding tickets, drifted closed.
    Ashley’s mouth didn’t make an O so much as a sideways D . A second too late, Gansey punched Ronan in the arm.
    “He’s sorry,” Gansey said.
    Ashley’s mouth was slowly closing. She blinked at the map of Wales and back to Ronan. He’d chosen his weapon well: only the truth, untempered by kindness.
    “My brother is —” said Declan. But he didn’t finish. There wasn’t anything he could say that Ronan hadn’t already proven. He said, “We’re going now. Ronan, I think you need to reconsider your —” But again, he had no words to end the sentence. His brother had taken all the catchy ones.
    Declan snagged Ashley’s hand, jerking her attention away and toward the apartment door.
    “Declan,” Gansey started.
    “Don’t try to make this better,” Declan warned. As he pulled Ashley out into the tiny stairwell and down the stairs, Adam heard the beginnings of damage control: He has problems, I told you, I tried to make sure he wouldn’t be here, he’s the one who found Dad, it messed him up, let’s go get seafood instead, don’t you think we look like lobster tonight? We do.
    The moment the apartment door was closed, Gansey said, “Come on, Ronan.”
    Ronan’s expression was still incendiary. His code of honor left no room for infidelity, for casual relationships. It wasn’t that he didn’t condone them; he couldn’t understand them.
    “So he’s a man-whore. It’s not your problem,” Gansey said. Ronan was not really Gansey’s problem, either, in Adam’s opinion, but they’d had this argument before.
    One of Ronan’s eyebrows was raised, sharp as a razor.
    Gansey strapped his journal closed. “That doesn’t work on me. She had nothing to do with you and Declan.” He said you and Declan like it was a physical object, something you could pick up and look underneath. “You treated her badly. You made the rest of us look bad.”
    Ronan looked chastened, but Adam knew better. Ronan wasn’t sorry for his behavior; he was only sorry that Gansey had been there to see him. What lived between the Lynch brothers was dark enough to hide anyone else’s feelings.
    But surely Gansey knew that as well as Adam. He ran his thumb back and forth across his bottom lip, a habit he never seemed to notice and Adam never bothered to point out. Catching Adam’s gaze, he said, “Christ, now I feel dirty. Come on. Let’s go to Nino’s. We’ll get pizza and I’ll call that psychic and the whole goddamn world will sort itself out.”
    This was why Adam could forgive that shallow, glossy version of Gansey he’d first met. Because of his money and his good family name, because of his handsome smile and his easy laugh, because he liked people and (despite his fears to the contrary) they liked him back, Gansey could’ve had any and all of the friends that he wanted. Instead he had chosen the three of them, three guys who should’ve, for three different reasons, been friendless.
    “I’m not coming,” Noah said.
    “Need some more alone time?” Ronan asked.
    “Ronan,” Gansey interjected. “Set your weapons to stun, will you? Noah, we won’t make you eat.